


Waves (The Ebb and Flow)

by Lsusanna



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, AU, Angst, Canon Compliant, Captain Swan - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Genderbend, Genderbending, Genderswap, Headcanon, Kid Fic, Pregnancy, Rule 63, Soulmates, The Jolly Roger, True Love, cs, fem!Hook, genderbent, more like 20 but whatever, nautical folklore, selkies being a recurring theme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4622001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lsusanna/pseuds/Lsusanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>18 things Eric Swan knows about Killian Jones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waves (The Ebb and Flow)

**Author's Note:**

> There isn't a timeline, here; I left them in the order they were written in.

  1.       She really, really likes the rain. Which Eric probably should have seen coming, but didn’t. Any kind of getting wet, actually.



 

They’re walking down main street, once, and it goes from a bearable drizzle to a full-blown downpour with no warning. Townspeople scatter around them, running into homes or stores for shelter, but he and Killian are expected back at the apartment at 7 pm sharp, because Mary Margret is attempting couscous, so they keep going. Eric hates it—fruitlessly shaking the water droplets from his fingers and pushing his sodden bangs out of his eyes. Trying to tug his jacket over his head by the collar without cutting off the circulation in his arms or taking it off and exposing himself to the cold. Spitting choice vilifications—the whole nine yards. And then he happens to glance at Killian. She has her head back and her shoulders hanging loosely, black curls slowly straightening as they get more and more waterlogged. She’s smiling softly up at the grey sky, eyes reflexively squinting against the raindrops that cling to her eyelashes, and as he watches, her expression broadens into a close-mouthed grin.

 

Apparently he stopped walking, because she pulled her gaze from the sky and set in on him. Her grin widens, which should have been impossible, but apparently wasn’t.

 

“…You’re crazy, you know that, right?” Eric tells her from under his half-assed jacket tent, because she _is_ , but he has a feeling that there’s too much fondness in his expression for the statement to have come out like he meant it to (it feels that way, anyway, in the tightness in his cheekbones).

 

Killian’s grin breaks momentarily, turning into a broad smile, all straight white teeth behind rain-flecked lips (Eric gets the feeling that if he kissed them, it’d be great; like eating fresh-picked, just-washed strawberries), before she closes her mouth, smile only remaining in her cheekbones. Her face does The Thing, that _‘keep watching and maybe you’ll find out’,_ that’s either sexual or playfully childlike, he doesn’t know yet, and then she saunters on ahead of him, fat droplets rolling down black leather. He follows.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

It’s flash feelings: Beads of water spraying against his back; the hiss as they shoot from the showerhead. Her ankle rubbing across his. The slight impact that vibrates through her body to his as her back rests against the tiled wall. Her arms around his shoulders; her fingers in his wet hair, the end of her severed limb against his shoulders. The sound of her breathing. Her waist rising and falling under his hands as she breathes. The edge of her hip shifting against his. The texture of the skin on her neck against his nose; the difference between soft, hollow space and the hard, defined line of her jawbone. Her lips by his ear; warm breath on his helix. Her nose clipping the edge of his nostril as her head raises to meet his. The smile that he feels more than sees, though he knows what it’d look like. Her lips against his.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The sun’s gone, but the world is still barely bright. The water reaches to under his arms; when he licks his lips he tastes salt. Eric was worried about being this deep, because he lost his ability to hear his phone ring from where it sits on the sand on the beach a few yards ago, but right now, he’s just watching Killian, the way a person watches someone else when they’re trying to make it look like normal interaction, instead of mapping something visually.

 

He doesn’t know a lot about nautical lore. Mostly just what she’s told him. But he’s seen mermaids with his own eyes, seen the athletic, practiced ease they cut through the water with, undulating waves of grace, and he knows there’s an assimilation, there—between them, and the way Killian swims. But more than that, though. There’s a difference. Between what and what, he doesn’t know, but there is. She doesn’t even need to be _in_ the water; just near it, near enough to inhale brine and exhale in a sigh. So then yes, he does know—the difference is between being inland and being home.

 

Eric doesn’t know all that much about the sea, or the tales told around it. But he does remember a story Killian told him once, based on a real creature but steeped in fiction. About a selkie, her seal skin taken. She was happy on land, yes, but selkies, they need the sea—they draw strength from it, that place where they truly belong. When given the chance, she returned.

 

They sway with the waves, Killian’s legs wrapped around Eric’s waist, her arms around his neck, and he holds her in place with fingers woven together under her thighs. She kisses him, and he tastes salt. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.       The missing hand is a source of self-consciousness. It’s unacknowledged, but the feeling’s there, the knowledge of lack. It helps that she can kill someone with it, but still. (He’s still half-convinced that’s why she started calling herself Captain Hook—because she _is_ the one that started it.)



 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.       Whenever they go over to Mary Margret and David’s cottage in the suburb-y part of town, she wears that black gloved prosthetic, instead of the hook.



 

It’s for Neal. Also, she’s really good with Neal. He loves her. Calls her ‘Lian’, because at the time he couldn’t pronounce K’s or multiple syllables, and it’s stuck. Eric has wondered at least twice how much that sounds like ‘Liam’ to her, but he’s never said anything.

 

The cottage has an open kitchen, which you can see most of the house from. Eric spends a lot of time in there, either helping Mary Margret with whatever meager cooking skills he has, or leaning against the counter, drinking something alcoholic, talking to whoever sits at the bar or else people watching. Usually people watching, and for Eric, people watching entails observing Henry, or staring at Killian and Neal. And they come in a set, they really do; the kid never leaves her alone. Eric doubts she minds. Usually, they’re sitting somewhere, Neal on her lap, and Eric can never understand how she manages to engage a toddler with nothing but words, most of the time, but she does.

 

It freaks him the hell out, how much Neal likes her, but what scares him more is how damn much Killian _smiles_ when she’s with the kid. It’s more noticeable with him, because he’s little, but whenever he thinks about it, the dynamic between she and Henry is pretty great too.

 

As he sips his beer, elbows on the Corian, Eric thinks that Killian would probably be a great parent. It isn’t the first time he’s thought it, and it won’t be the last.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.       She has really great balance. It’s probably a sailor thing. There was a smallish earthquake, once, because Storybrook’s villain of the month decided that would be cool. Eric fell on his ass, and so did David, and a random kiosk, and Mary Margret would have too, except she grabbed a lamppost. But Killian stayed on her feet; struck a pose similar to a surfer dude’s and waited it out.



 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.       The ring he gets her, when he does get her a ring, is a vaguely triangular piece of faceted onyx, poised on silver, which fills the space between her knuckle and the middle joint in her finger. It’s used as both an engagement ring and wedding ring.



 

It suits her. It just does.

 

He’s yet to see her take it off.

 

(He _has_ seen her punch someone with it though.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.       She’s got salt water in her veins.



 

Eric got the term from her, and she got it from Liam, who used it to describe them both, and he got it from their mother. It doesn’t make it any less apt, though. He’d say it’s because she’s lived around the sea, always, but he doesn’t think so. With all the times he’s seen her bleed, he’s still surprised that the scent that clings to the air is more like copper than brine.

 

He doesn’t understand it. How someone could love something, identify with something, so much; know something so well. It’s fascinating though, probably because he’s never had it.

 

They’ve spent hours on the deck of her ship on clear nights, with her standing behind him pointing up at things, or adjusting the way he holds that sextant, and by all rights she shouldn’t know shit about the stars in this world, at least not more than he does, being a long-time citizen, but she does.

 

Eric also doesn’t know anything about knot-tying, or boat steering, or sail rigging, or boat anatomy, or sailing terminology, or leather-wearing, or anything else, honestly. He’s pretty hopeless, too; he’s known Killian for years, and barely any of it has rubbed off. (He does, however, know that he won’t get a reaction by saying ‘buckle some swash’ in any given sentence. But that’s because Killian gets too stuck between being amused and horrified to be anything.) Mostly, he just likes to watch her, during his lessons, because it’s just so _obvious_ , how smitten she is.

 

They went walking down the beach one day, before they found the Jolly Roger again, arm in arm. Eric watched as Killian tipped her head back and breathed deeply; as she turned her head to the blue expanse of water and looked as far as she could before the horizon stopped her. (There’s another part to that tale she told him. Even at their most content, a selkie will still look longingly to the sea, when they’re away from it. Eric wonders, sometimes, what he’s keeping her away from.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.       She has successfully picked his pocket. He had no idea. Logically, he understands—three hundred or so years of piracy trump juvenile delinquency. But dammit, that was _his_ thing, fuck.



 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.       The whole love-of-sea thing doesn’t hold a candle to how much she loves that damn boat.



 

It’s not just a comedic quirk, either; referring to it as if it’s sentient, cleaning it, whatever else she does. It’s a legit emotional dependency. (He has a security-blanket theory; it has a lot to do with Liam.) (He also has a feeling that maybe she isn’t weird—it is made of enchanted wood, after all. Maybe the Jolly Roger is more alive than it seems.) For as significant as it all is, he can never seem to come up with a lot to say on the matter. Or maybe he just can’t find good enough words. Killian probably could though. (Or maybe not. Maybe she’d just sigh and make those Expressive Eyes; give a visceral example, that’s probably only fitting from her point of view. She loses all her eloquence when she talks about the Roger.)

 

Eric hadn’t really realized what it meant, when she traded it to bring him back from New York. Well, he did, but just not the true scope of it. He has since come to understand how deep it runs (even if he still doesn’t understand why). He’s that much more grateful.

 

(When they found it again, the Jolly Roger, he thought—this is it, this is the seal skin. And he waited to see if she would go. Sail out into open, endless seas—and be welcomed back, no doubt. But she didn’t. Hasn’t. It still bothers him, once in a while, how big a responsibility it is to have her heart; how significant it is, to have been given the heart of Captain Hook.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1.       She’s never getting over Michael. Thus, even though she isn’t going out of her way to kill Gold herself anymore, if the opportunity to save him ever arose, Eric has the feeling she would let him die.



 

 

 

 

 

 10.    Pregnancy apparently brings out the inner navy lieutenant that Killian’s suppressed over the years. (Not very well though. She’s always been clean. Which Eric found weird in the beginning, because it seemed like it should be very un-pirate-ish, but ultimately should have seen coming. What with that, and the organizational systems he developed while living in a car, they drive each other nuts.) Mary Margret calls it nesting. Eric calls it weird. Henry doesn’t call it anything, because he escapes to Regina’s, the little traitor.

 

 

 

 

 

 11.  She can sing really well.

 

Eric wakes up one morning, obscenely disoriented, and he has the feeling that something’s really wrong, only upon further inspection, it’s more that feeling of things being too right. He has no idea what it is, but then he registers a voice, and he doesn’t realize that it’s Killian’s until he looks to her side of the bed and sees her mouth moving. It’s the first time he’s ever heard her sing. She sounds different. It takes him a minute to realize that that’s more to do with _what_ she’s singing, instead of the fact that she is. It’s not even English—it’s not anything, actually; the more he listens, the more it sounds like…he doesn’t know what. Sensual, visceral somethings, but not words. It sets a discomfort over his hips. It’s…it’s weird, but…it’s great. When Killian finally stops murmuring lyrics into the early morning air, Eric’s half-relieved, half-chagrined, and it’s strange, because singing shouldn’t be affecting him at all.

 

“…What. Um. What was that?” Eric asks, eventually, turning towards Killian (he hadn’t realized till now that he couldn’t move before).

 

“A siren’s song,” she answers softly. “I heard it many years ago. I’ve…never been able to forget it. Nearly lost four crewmembers to them.”

 

“What was it like?”

 

“They look a lot like mermaids,” Killian replies. “They sit on rocks, sing. One had a lyre. It sounded like… It didn’t…drive me to madness, because I’m a woman, but it did affect me. I could see the appeal. It was…haunting, and horrible, but…wonderful. Caused the wounds and made itself the only thing that could heal them.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

12\.  She’s not an alcoholic, she just self-medicates, when she needs to. There are a surprising amount of differences between the two. The biggest is that as far as he knows, her flask is somewhere in her cabin, and has been for the last few years.

 

 

 

 

 

 13.  She hates herself.

 

It’s the pirate thing. She still hasn’t forgiven herself for most of her choices, probably never will. (Eric still hasn’t decided whether the narcissism streak is a cover or her coming full circle.) For the most part, she’s accepted her past, because that’s what it is, a past. But before, when it wasn’t, she used to _hate_ it, when people called her a pirate; assumed that was the extent of her. That was the dichotomy.

 

 

 

 

 

 14.  For a full two months after he’s born, the only way to get their son to fall asleep is for Killian to walk around the apartment carrying him, singing those horrifically dirty songs she’s learned on the high seas. It’s incredibly strange.

 

David stops by one day, on sheriff business. At this point, Killian probably hasn’t slept in three days, ish (and neither has Eric, for that matter), and is so _beyond_ giving a shit about decorum, not when it stands in the way of the kid finally sleeping, and so grandpa gets quite the earful.

 

Until the day he dies, Eric will swear up and down that the man blushes to his ears.

 

 

 

 

 

 15.  She’s not the stable one.

 

It’s easy to think that, what with the selfless tendencies and all that, but really, it’s just because her particular brand of fucked up can pass for emotionally healthy.

 

 Well. 

 

She spend three hundred years on a revenge bender, so maybe that isn’t exactly true. It just looks healthier next to Eric’s, because he’s all about denial, suppression. Killian’s more expressive. That’s the problem though. She just feels so much, her emotions are so big—it’s what makes her a great person to be with, her being such a lover, but there’s a flipside. He’s seen her blindsided by all that, more than once. She hurts just as much as she loves. And she’s stubborn as hell, which is apparently in her genetics, and so the revenge missions aren’t so far-fetched.

 

 

 

 

 

 16.  Her laugh isn’t…infectious, it doesn’t make you want to join in, but it is… Eric doesn’t know what it is. Captivating, maybe. It could be because genuine laughter is so hard to come by, with Killian, but either way, when she laughs, he can listen to it all day. He could be biased though.

 

 

 

 

 

 17.  Liam is an open wound. It’s still bleeding.

 

 

 

 

 

 18.  They’re supposed to be where they are.

 

Eric can say that with conviction. He knows it. He knows it because both of them would die for the other. Because David and Mary Margret like her, and so do Neal, and Henry. He knows it because she wears his trust in a black stone on her finger, because her seal skin has ended up bonded to him, somehow. Because once, in the burnished grey half-light of the early dawn, he felt her heartbeat against his chest, and when he pressed his fingers to his wrist to find his pulse, he found it thrummed at the same pace.

 

 


End file.
